Anthony Weiner’s 2009 campaign sent a press release with a new contact person: Basil Smikle.

“Basically, right now, I’m sort of one of the few people involved in helping him with his overall strategy and with the folks on the ground,” Smikle told me.

Smikle is a motorcycle-riding, African-American political consultant who nearly joined Weiner in 2005. “In the last campaign, I was neutral for a while, and he and I talked around the primary time and I said I would certainly like to work with him if he got that 40 percent. And he came just short of that.”